THE YANKEE COMANDANTE

members of the Second Front, including
Menoyo and Jesús Carreras, had gathered
in Trinidad, where they had secured a
muddy airstrip, effectively cutting the island
in two. Trujillo was heard broadcasting
a message to the Cuban people, saying,
“Fire, fire, fire to that demon Fidel
Castro and his brother Raúl!” Trujillo
began to air-drop dozens of crates of
.50-calibre ammunition to Morgan and
his followers, the billowing white parachutes
seesawing down from the clouds.
When another supply plane returned, its
crew reported seeing lit bombs tracing
paths across the night sky, as if there were
an electrical storm. On August 12th,
Morgan, who had brought the shortwave
radio with him, spoke to Trujillo, and
told him that his forces had captured the
town. “Trinidad is ours!” Morgan said.
“Don’t let us down.”
The following evening—Castro’s
thirty-third birthday—Trujillo dispatched
to Cuba a plane carrying the first
members of the strike force. As the soldiers
disembarked at the airstrip in Trinidad,
which had been marked with lights,
they could hear Morgan and his men
shouting denunciations of Castro, and, as
they joined in, the cries grew louder and
more intense, converging, like voices at
a stadium, in a deafening incantation:
“DEATH TO CASTRO!”
Then a towering, bearded figure, who
had also been chanting, emerged from
where he was hiding, under a mango tree.
It was Fidel Castro.
Morgan had pulled off a trick within
a trick. He was not a counter-revolutionary—he
was a double agent. He and the
Second Front had been colluding with
Castro; the radio messages, the cutting of
communications, and the exploding
bombs had all been part of the stagecraft
of what Morgan described as a “fictitious
war.”
Morgan and those loyal to Castro
pointed machine guns at the stunned
fighters from the strike force. One of
Trujillo’s men later said, “I should not be
judged as a conspirator, but as an imbecile.”
Soldiers from the strike force drew
their guns, and for a moment the plotters
and the counter-plotters peered at one
another, as if still puzzling over who had
crossed whom. Then a few of Trujillo’s
men opened fire, and everyone began
shooting. One of Morgan’s friends ran
toward the plane and was killed. By the
time the fusillade ended, two members of
the strike force had died, and the rest had
been apprehended.
Morgan had helped break the first
major counter-revolutionary plot against
the Castro regime. Later, during a fivehour
televised address that lasted until
three in the morning, Castro explained
what had happened. Morgan, smiling
and wearing his crisp rebel uniform, appeared
beside him. During the previous
few months, he and Castro had spent
hours scheming. Castro was seen draping
his long arm around Morgan, his
prized double agent. He hailed Morgan
as a “Cuban,” and Morgan referred to
Castro as his “faithful friend.” Menoyo
recalls, “They had complete trust in one
another.”
The Yankee comandante revealed to
the public that, after being approached to
lead the counter-revolution, he and
Menoyo had alerted Castro, who directed
them to draw out their enemies.
Castro said in his televised address, “Everyone
played his assigned parts. It was
better than a movie.” Herbert Matthews,
in a letter to Hemingway, described the
events as “stranger than fiction but real.”
Morgan and Menoyo had been so
convincing in their roles as counterrevolutionaries
that Leo Cherne, and
others, suspected that they had originally
been part of the conspiracy, switching
sides only when they were about to be discovered.
But, according to Menoyo and
others involved in the scheme, they had
not turned against Castro—who remained
revered in Cuba, and who had
reaffirmed his support of democratic principles
during his April visit to Washington.
Despite Morgan’s concerns about the
Castro regime, he stated emphatically
that he and members of the Second Front
would “never unite” with brutes like Trujillo
or Batista.
On August 20th, Morgan called the
F.B.I. agents who had pursued him in
Miami, and apologized for not having
been more forthcoming. He explained
that he had not wanted to “sell out Cuba,”
where he had many friends. He added
that he didn’t think that he had broken
any American laws, though he might
have “bent” them slightly.
The Secret Service launched an investigation
of Morgan and recommended
that no action be taken against this man
of “unquestioned courage,” given that he
posed no threat to “the safety and welfare
of our President.” But Hoover fumed
over the deception, and in September the
State Department stripped Morgan of his
citizenship.
The C.I.A. made no effort to intercede
on Morgan’s behalf. That May, according
to declassified documents, the
agency had cancelled its effort to recruit
him, after a background check turned up
evidence of his criminal youth and his
scandalous military record. An internal
memorandum had noted, “Station
strongly feels any covert arrangement
with Morgan undesirable from security